Tutorial of the Week: Folding Your Very Own Box Corners!

Good morning, everyone! Well, it is that time of the week again, and I thought that I would build on last week’s topic of cutting and bending your metal filigrees by doing a tutorial on folding your own box corners 🙂 If you missed last week’s blog post, you’ll want to read it first.

There are 2 main methods I use for creating box corners using ButterBeeScraps metal filigrees; however, I do think that the first method does create a nicer finish for most shapes.

Method #1

Square and Round Filigrees

Step #1

We are going to work with round and square filigrees first…just because they are a bit easier 😉 If your filigree is dimensional, you’ll need to flatten it out. For this project, I like to use my Big Shot…it creates a beautifully flat filigree 🙂

Step #2

Cut a “triangle” piece out of your filigree. Your cuts should be at right angles like this…and don’t forget to file those edges…we don’t want any blood shed 😉

Step #3

Now starts the real transformation…lay a ruler across your filigree, ensuring that the ruler lines up with one of your cut lines. Then bend up the exposed tab like this:

I like to use a ruler because I can get a nice, crisp, straight fold…it is impossible to bend a filigree like you would a piece of paper…trust me, I’ve tried it!

BONUS TIP: Instead of a ruler, you can also try using a pair of long chain-nose pliers for bending your filigree…sometimes it’s easier to get a good grip with the pliers 😉 …and yeah, I know that’s a corner filigree I’m bending…the round and square ones will bend the same…trust me 😛

Step #4

The next step is to turn your ruler 90º and line the edge of your ruler up with the cut line that is now sticking straight up in the air. Bend your piece in half along the edge of your ruler, and…voila! Now you have a box corner that you can glue to any box 🙂 As you can see in the picture on the right below, I line up the cut lines along the vertical edge of the box. …and just in case you’re curious, I made this box corner using a Copper Flower Metal Filigree Embellishment (#286-C).

BONUS TIP: When working with square filigrees, flatten the filigree AFTER you cut a corner of it away. You can retain the dimension on those little bits, and they make great leaves if you tuck them behind a flower, or use them to create an adorable pair of earrings like I did here:

Other Filigree Shapes

You still follow all of the steps above for irregular shaped filigrees, BUT…although cutting a triangle out of a filigree sounds easy, it can be a bit tricky for some filigree shapes. Just cutting a triangle willy-nilly can make your corner look skewed and out of whack. Here’s a picture of what I mean:

Ya see what I mean? On the left, the 2 “cut lines” are different lengths. This is no bueno! So…how do we fix this? The answer…we need a template! It is super easy to do…just grab a piece of plain old copy paper, and draw a horizontal line across the center. Place a mark somewhere near the center of that line, and use it to line up a compass. Then place marks at 45º, 90º and 135º. Lastly, draw in your 3 lines through your original tick mark and the 3 you made using the compass. You should end up with something like this:

We will be using this template to help you visualize how your filigree is going to look on the corner of a box, and to help you to draw guide lines on your filigree. The 2 diagonal lines above the center of your template will be your “cut lines”. The 2 diagonal lines below the center will be your “fold lines”. That area between your “fold lines” represents the top of the box. Here’s a diagram to help you visualize what I mean:

Now center your filigree (face down) on your template and mark the “cut lines” and “fold lines” with a sharpie…if you can get your hands on a silver one with a fine tip, you’ll save your eyes ALOT of strain! Here’s how I centered that Bronze Flower Metal Filigree Embellishment (#283-B) from above on my template:

BONUS TIP: Your box corner will look best if the length of your “cut lines” are the same length (or close to) as your “fold lines”.

After you cut and fold your filigree as described above, it will look like this:

When I started experimenting with the more rectangular filigrees, I found that most worked the best by lining them up on the template such that they didn’t need to be cut at all…I just marked the fold lines, and bent away 🙂 Here’s what I created using filigrees (#676-B), (#810-B) and (#553-C):

Method #2

…and just when you thought this tutorial was getting long enough, I’m going to throw another method for making box corners at you 🙂 Trust me…you’ll thank me in the end because you can take the same filigree and make 2 different looking box corners out of it just by using one method or the other 😉

Step #1

Flatten your filigree…just like in Step #1 of Method #1 🙂

Step #2

Cut a “triangle” piece out of your filigree…just like Step #2 of Method #1 🙂

Step #3

This is where I change things up on you 😛 We are going to bend our filigrees a little differently this time. If you refer back to your template, the “cut lines” remain the same and the “fold lines” are now the horizontal line, and the vertical line below the center. The little slivers between the horizontal line and the “cut lines” will now end up on the top of the box. The left and right quadrants below the horizontal line will end up on the edges of the box. Here’s another diagram to make things a little clearer for those of you that are visual (like me):

I know…it looks a bit intimidating and alot funky, but it will make sense soon…promise 😉

Lay your ruler on the horizontal “fold line” and bend up the 2 tabs that will end up being on the top of the box…like this:

Step #4

Now turn your ruler 90º and bend the piece in half (along the vertical “fold line”)…and, voila! You now have a different box corner that you can glue to any box 🙂

Here are a few more examples of box corners I made using filigrees (#676-B), (#810-B), (#068-C) and (#822-B). I’ve included corners made using Method #1 on the left and Method #2 on the right 🙂

Whew! …that concludes the tutorial. I know today’s post was a long one, but I really wanted to cover all of the bases and show you how versatile these filigrees really are 🙂 I hope you liked today’s blog post, and stay tuned to see what I have in store for you next week 😉 Cheers!